ONCE upon a time there were four beautiful princesses called Sahar, Jawaher, Maha and Hala.

They lived in a fabulous palace and every year would go on two long holidays with their friends.

In winter they would ski at an exclusive resort in the French Alps. In summer they went to parties in Italy and Greece. Then, abruptly, the fairytale ended.

For the four sisters were part of the Saudi Arabian royal family and they had made the mistake of crossing the patriarchy that rules one of the most oppressive states in the world.

Now, instead of the carefree existence they once enjoyed as children of King Abdullah, they are trapped in a gilded cage.

The heavy metal gate that serves as the main entrance to the beachfront villa they occupy in the grounds of the royal palace in the Saudi capital Riyadh is padlocked at all times.

Guards in a watchtower keep them under observation 24 hours a day helped by the glare of spotlights after dark. And escape by sea is made impossible by underwater nets and concrete obstacles.

When the women do leave the compound to shop for food it is only with the permission of a half-brother who ensures their every move is monitored by a squad of plain-clothes security men.

There appears to be no respite from this house arrest as their London- based mother Alanoud Alfayez, distrustful of promises to grant her daughters’ freedom in exchange for her return, refuses to submit to the clutches of her ex-husband.

The plight of the Riyadh Four has come to light after a decade following publication of a plaintive email from two of the victims, Sahar, 42 and Jawaher, 38, and a plea by their mother to a UN agency, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“They are imprisoned, held against their will, cut off from the world,” wrote Alfayez, who – before her divorce – was one of the king’s rotating harem of four official wives.

“Hala’s condition deteriorates day by day and she is given no medical treatment although there is a medical centre in the palace. She suffers from serious anorexia and psychological problems. After two years without any contact with me she was able to telephone me and told me she wanted to die.”

For her part, Sahar says: “We slowly watch each other fading into nothingness.”

The fate of the sisters reinforces the view that Saudi Arabia is one of the most backward countries on Earth when it comes to women’s rights.

Apart from being the only country in the world where women are not permitted to drive a car, it comes 145th out of the 148 countries in the UN’s Gender Inequality Index.

A sign telling women to wear conservative Islamic attire [AP]

Women are not allowed to marry without the permission of their guardian; unlike men they do not have unilateral rights to divorce

Only Niger, Afghanistan and Yemen come lower. International pressure group Human Rights Watch accuses Saudi of “systemic discrimination against women”.

It adds: “All girls and women are forbidden from travelling, conducting official business or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from their male guardians.

Likewise women are not allowed to marry without the permission of their guardian; unlike men they do not have unilateral rights to divorce and often face discrimination in relation to custody of their children.”

While some Muslim countries such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi have relatively liberal regimes, the Saudis are Sunnis who adhere to a strict form of Islam known as the Way of the Salaf. That is to say, they uphold a very literal interpretation of Sharia law.

People found to have committed adultery or homosexual acts are subject to the death penalty and serious and/or persistent theft is punished by the cutting off of the perpetrator’s right hand.

These punishments are supplemented by an array of harsh penalties for what people in the West would consider to be relatively petty offences. Great care is taken to ensure the chastity of young people before marriage and fidelity within it, for example.

To this end, women must wear conservative and loose-fitting clothes, including a full-length garment known as an abbaya and keep a scarf with them at all times in case they are asked to cover their head.

Shopping is a popular pastime in Saudi but as it is one of the few contexts in which men and women have the potential to meet each other outside the home restrictions are tight.

Some shopping malls discourage single men from entering at certain times or on specific days and many shops and restaurants are segregated in “bachelor” and family sections.

Even when queuing to pay, men and women are kept apart by being forced to form two different lines separated by a barrier.

Such is the obsession with modesty that while changing rooms for women are starting to appear in shops in Jeddah, virtually no clothes shops in Riyadh have them.

All these petty restrictions are enforced with an iron hand by the Hai’a, commonly known as the Muttawa – the Religious Police responsible for the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”.

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As the Foreign Office says in its advice to Britons living in Saudi: “Saudi laws and moral standards are considerably stricter than those of the UK and in certain cases, notably involving dress, drink, moral behaviour and mixing with unrelated members of the opposite sex, what is not a crime in Britain is treated as a crime in Saudi Arabia.”

Limited progress is being made on women’s rights, however. While women have had the vote in this country since 1918, they have never been permitted that right in Saudi.

But from next year women will not only be given the vote but permitted to run for office in local elections and will be eligible to be appointed to the Consultative Assembly, which advises the king.

Meanwhile, one consolation for the four sisters is that they have not suffered the fate of another royal Saudi, Princess Mash’ail.

In 1977, at the age of 19, she was accused of committing adultery with Khaled al-Sha’er Mulhallal, the nephew of a Saudi Arabian ambassador.

After being found guilty she was sentenced to death by her own grandfather, Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz, an older brother of the late King Khalid.

She was taken to a public park in the city of Jeddah, blindfolded and ordered to kneel. In front of her lover, she was then beheaded with a sword.

The story of the young lovers was taken up by a English journalist called Anthony Thomas and turned into a TV docu-drama called Death Of A Princess.

In response to its screening in 1980 a furious Saudi government ordered the British ambassador out of the country, imposed visa restrictions on business people and banned British Airways’ Concorde from its airspace.

It remains to be seen how it will react to this latest exposition of its medieval attitude to the sort of freedoms we take for granted in this country.